T2 - 01 - The New John Connor Chronicles - Dark Futures (32 page)

"It's already too late."

"So shouldn't we act even faster?"

"It was too late for that as soon as the T-XA appeared," Danny said. "We'll have to work around it, but we can't do everything. And we've got to be fully recovered next time we face it. We can use a few hours' rest."

"Well, if you say so. I hope you know what you're doing."

"I told you we do," Selena said.

"I sure hope we do," Danny said. "Tomorrow night we'll find out"

"It'd just be nice if you could keep us posted," Enrique said to Sarah, ignoring John and the Specialists. "Or even come and see us. Sometimes it's hard to know who your real friends are, who you can trust. People can turn into strangers."

"Not us," Sarah said. "But I'm not sure you really want us around. If your connection with us gets known..."

"What?"

"It might be very dangerous for you. We have enemies you don't even want to know about." She clapped him on the shoulder. "If you think these guys are tough, you ought to see the other side."

"Yeah, sure."

"I'm serious, Enrique."

"Whatever you say."

"No. I'm
really
serious."

"I said, 'Whatever you say.' All right? Hey, what do you expect from me? This is all pretty sudden, you know. I'm only human."

We all are
, John thought.
Even Jade.

"I'm grateful, too," Sarah said. "You don't know what we owe you."

“No, I don't." Enrique gave another laugh, more mischievous. "But I'm starting to suspect. Now, who originally said that?"

"H.G. Wells," John said quickly. "The guy who wrote The Time Machine"

"Yeah?" Enrique looked at him closely. "Keep your money, John. Buy me a drink next time you drop by."

"Sure. Or maybe we could all see a movie. You guys should get out more often."

Enrique and Franco led them to the garage, turning on a ingle fluorescent lamp. Enrique pointed out a 1992 four-door Ford Explorer, an upgrade from the Bronco they'd borrowed last time. "It's ready for action," he said, slapping his hand on the bonnet. "No problems with it at all. just try to bring it back, this is my best truck." It needed a wash, but it seemed to be in good condition.

"Thanks, Enrique," Sarah said. "We'll try."

"Yeah, you do that." He hugged her roughly, and John realized something he'd never put his finger on before: A lot of Enrique's tough-guy talk was meant to hide what Sarah meant to him. There were really deep emotions here that John might never figure out. Enrique let her go, saying, "You try to come back in one piece, too. All right? Whatever this is all about."

He wandered off, leaving Franco to supervise, as the Specialists checked the truck over. They sure knew about engines. John guessed that might be pretty important in the future, in a world with no auto mechanics.

"Very well," Jade said at last, not smiling, but looking kind of satisfied, like she'd tried her best to find a problem, and decided there weren't any.

"She means it's a great truck," John said, interpreting for Franco. "It'll do us fine. Jade doesn't like to overstate things."

"What now?" Franco said. He still seemed sour after what Selena had done to him. She must have sensed it, too, because she stepped towards him and he tensed up.

"I'm sorry I hurt you," she said. "Really. Please understand, the whole future depends on this. We're grateful for your help."

Franco nodded silently.

"Weapons duty," John said.

They packed the Ford with guns, ammunition, explosives. Jade found a modified mini-gun like the T-800 had used in 1994. She was smaller than the Terminator, but John could see how strong she was: She hefted the huge gun easily.

Anton gave a kind of sickly smile and said, "I need one of those."

They found another one, then an assortment of pistols.

Each of the Specialists chose an M-16 assault rifle with attached 40mm. grenade launcher. Enrique had a more up-to-date cache of weapons than when they'd come here last time.

John and Sarah checked their own weapons, making sure everything was still okay, and helped find ammunition. Since that last time, John had become even more Skilled with guns, and even less willing to use them. As he'd once told the T-800, you couldn't just go around killing people. He hoped it wouldn't come to that.

Eventually, the Specialists were satisfied. Still in their clothes, they bedded down for the night. John tossed and turned, aching from exertion, then the long car ride. For what seemed like hours, he worried about it all, how they were ever going to beat the T-XA, even with all these weapons. Surely it knew what they planned. It would be in
Colorado
before them, ready to reacquire them. He'd had enough experience with Terminators to know how they thought.

At some point he must have drifted off, because then there was a light in the trailer, and Sarah's hand on his shoulder, gently shaking him awake.

They headed north to pick up 1-15, Danny taking the first stint at the wheel. He drove smoothly on the dark road into an unknown future. John sat in the back seat, not too comfortable, between Sarah and Jade. Anton took a position in the back of the truck, squeezing into a corner, watching after their weapons and equipment. Whenever the Specialists drove, John felt almost surplus to requirements, since they could handle long stretches at the wheel with no sign of fatigue. Offering to take a shift would sound ridiculous.

For a long time, no one spoke. Danny kept the Ford right on the speed limit. Having gotten this far, the Specialists wanted no more problems with police. That could only slow them down, maybe force them to steal yet another vehicle.

"So what's the plan?" Sarah said. "You just want to barge into a Defense site at
Colorado Springs
and blow everything Up? I guess you could do it with your abilities, but this could get nasty."

Selena looked round from the front. "That's about it," she said, sounding flip. "You got a better idea, Sarah?"

"It's not the way I'd want to do it. If we could get some cooperation... maybe from the woman who's doing the research."

"Rosanna Monk," Danny said. "She took over from my father. I don't think she's going to be very cooperative."

"This must be painful for you, Danny," Sarah said. "But we convinced your parents. We could convince Monk as well."

"I don't think Rosanna needs convincing, Sarah. Not about the time travel stuff."

"Why not?"

"In the future that we came from, she led the team that invented time travel."

"She
what
?"

"She never said anything in public, but we're pretty sure she worked out that the technology she used as the basis for her nanoprocessor came from the future. That got her working on the problem. She's not a physicist, but she knows physics. And she got top physicists involved. By now, their work is a long way advanced."

"Christ! But if you could convince her about Judgment Day..."

"Sarah, we'll try. Maybe the T-XA won't get to her in time. Anything's possible."

"Ms. Connor," Jade said, "we don't have a lot of choice how we do things, not with the T-XA around. We planned to see all the senior people at Cyberdyne, and their con-
tacts
in
Washington
. If we had the choice, we'd try to convince them all. But the T-XA will have anticipated that."

"It can get around faster than we can," Danny said. "And it can hit multiple targets."

John recalled his experiences with the T-1000. "You mean it's terminated them by now? Killed them? And maybe copied itself after them?"

"No, John. Worse than that. The TX-A is Skynet's most advanced infiltrator unit. It's got nanoware that lets it read or control minds. It can analyze a human brain and reconstruct its memories, or insert part of its own programming. These models have been devastatingly effective against the human Resistance."

"So that's why you couldn't let it have Robert's body?"

"That's correct," Jade said. "He knew too many secrets. If the T-XA got its hands on him while his brain was still fresh, it would know everything we know, including all our plans."

"And all our weaknesses," Anton said from the back. "Our technology. Everything."

"Can't you do anything about it?" John said, turning to him.

"We have our own counter-intrusive nanoware. Its effectiveness is unknown."

"By now, it will have programmed the senior Cyberdyne people to assist and obey it," Jade said in her sad, resigned voice. "There's nothing we can do to convince them."

"But we've got to," John said.

"I'm sorry, John. It's too late."

"That's why it was no use hurrying last night," Danny said. "If we'd run around exhausting ourselves, trying to beat the T-XA to
Cyberdyne's
people, we'd have run into it again, for no advantage. We couldn't have stopped it We'll stake out Monk's place tonight, see if we can talk to her, just in case the T-XA missed her somehow, but we could never have gotten to all of them."

John considered that The T-XA couldn't have gotten to everyone, but it could split up. If it got to some of the top people in
L.A.
, and the researchers in
Colorado Springs
, that would be enough to cause problems. There'd be reinforcements tonight waiting for them. Not only that, they couldn't trust anyone. Even if someone said they'd help, what if the T-XA had reached them first?

He'd seen the abilities of the Specialists, but he doubted that even they could fight both the T-XA and all the resources the military could throw at them. Not only that-even if they could destroy
Cyberdyne's
research, it wouldn't be enough. They'd found that out already. Even destroying everything in 1994 hadn't stopped work on the nanoprocessor, just slowed it down. There would always be someone else to do the work, like happened after
Miles's
death. They'd have to get cooperation. Somehow, they had to convince people never to build Skynet, or anything like it.

There were underlying forces you had to deal with, forces that pushed events in a certain direction. They'd need to convince people with the power to make decisions, get them to understand the dangers-that the world wasn't big enough for both Skynet and humanity. There had to be an ongoing will to stop it.

"Monk isn't just working on time travel," Anton said. "All her research is more advanced than has been announced.
 
They'll only release information when it suits them, or if they think someone else is getting close. By now, she's got a working nanoprocessor, the most advanced computer hardware on the planet. It's not yet ready for military purposes, but announcements will be made in the next few years. Soon they'll have a chip that can fly the stealth bombers."

Sarah groaned.
 
"It's just like the Terminator told us, There except it's been postponed a decade."

"Perhaps, but it might not all be the same.
 
There are different personalities involved, different perspectives.
 
Right now, they're using their new hardware for different hardware purposes. The announcements will come later, when they get their first success."

"Different purposes?" John said. "You mean like the time travel research?"

"Yes. And developing new weapons systems."

"Yeah, that figures," Sarah said. "It never ends, does it? There's always someone wanting to make a mark on the world, thrust out and say, Took at me, aren't I smart? I can invent time travel, or a new doomsday bomb, or some other obscene weapon that you wouldn't believe.' Them and their damn weapons. It just pisses me off that there's a woman involved this time. I always used to think it was men and their need to prove their creativity. Doesn't anyone want to take responsibility anymore? Do we all have to go around building technologies that will destroy us, until the future doesn't need us at all?"

"Bill Joy made a big impression on my mom," John said. "You know, that article in Wired magazine." It was obvious the Specialists didn't know what he was talking about, so he let it drop. "Mora, maybe there's nothing wrong with technology. Maybe we've just got to use it the right way."

"The right way? When the military are funding it? You think time travel is going to be used for some nice educational
 
purpose, John, going back and watching the dinosaurs or something, checking out whether they had feathers, or how fast T-Rex could run when it was hungry?"

John laughed. "That'd be pretty cool."

"Yeah, well, don't bet on it happening like that. They'll want it to be a weapon. They'll be planning how to go back in time and nuke the Chinese."

"Time travel doesn't work that way," Jade said. "It wouldn't benefit them. They'd simply create another timeline."

"So you told us. But I bet they don't know that. Even when they figure it out, they'll find a way to make it more dangerous. Just you wait."